Up to 10 U.S. Department of Defense officers will visit Colorado in the next two weeks to determine the suitability of transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay to prisons in Florence and Cañon City.

“The Department of Defense notified Congress today that it will undertake additional site surveys within the next few weeks at Colorado State Penitentiary II,” said Cmdr. Gary Ross of the U.S. Navy, a Department of Defense spokesman.

The federal officers will be looking at a medium-security prison in the federal complex in Florence and a vacant, maximum-security state prison in Cañon City.

Officials did not say how many Guantanamo detainees would be under consideration for transfer to Colorado, but dozens remain at the U.S. base in Cuba.

“I remain opposed to any plan to bring Guantanamo terrorists to Colorado,” Gardner said in a statement. “I call on the Obama Administration to immediately halt any consideration of this irresponsible idea.”

U.S. Sen. Bennet, D-Colo., also raised objections.

“The Department of Defense has no authority to transfer these prisoners or make such modifications and they have made no case that it makes sense to do so,” Bennet said in a statement.

Gov. John Hickenlooper said he wants to have a full understanding of the costs, risk and impacts for Colorado. At present, there are no plans, nor is it legal under federal law, to move detainees to the U.S., he said in a statement.

One of the options is to house inmates at Colorado State Penitentiary II, or Centennial South Correctional Facility.

The prison, completed in 2010, was mothballed in 2012 following a change in policy that dramatically decreased the number of inmates held in maximum-security state facilities.

“We have certainly been looking for something to do with that empty prison,” said Adrienne Jacobson, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections. “We continue to pay for it.”

The other option is to put Guantanamo Bay inmates at Federal Correctional Institute Florence, which currently holds more than 1,000 inmates.

The medium-security prison is in the same complex as Administrative Maximum Penitentiary, often called the Alcatraz of the Rockies or Supermax, which is the highest security prison in the federal prison system. It houses terrorists including Zacarias Moussaoui, a 9/11 conspirator; Faisal Shahzad, linked to the 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt; and Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Ross said the team will assess potential locations for holding a limited number of current Guantanamo detainees in the United States, and to assess the costs associated with doing so.

Currently there are 114 detainees remaining at Guantanamo Bay. Of those, 53 are earmarked for transfer to other countries. Most of the remaining 61 have also been approved for transfer to other countries, but arrangements have not been made for their transfer, Ross said.

“We are in the process of looking for a suitable country to send most of the detainees,” Ross said. “Ten of the detainees are facing criminal charges for alleged terrorist acts.”

A DoD team visited the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. in August, and the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C. in September as part of the review, Ross said.

“The process to find a suitable location is complex and time consuming,” he said. “We want to complete the plan as soon as possible and propose a plan for closing Guantanamo Bay.”

One of Obama’s campaign promises was that he would close the facility. The detention facility was set up in 2002 and once held 780 terrorist suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The facilities also will be assessed for their ability to serve as military commission sites,” Ross said.

Although the detainees would be held on the grounds of an existing detention facility, they would be guarded by military personnel. Any proposal would include permanent housing for the military correctional officers.

The team of Pentagon officials are carrying out a review of military, federal and state level civilian facilities that could be modified to securely and humanely hold detainees, he said.

No sites have been selected for holding detainees at this point, Ross said.

Other Colorado politicians and officials weighed in Friday on the notion.

“This is outrageous and I’ll do everything I can to stop it,” U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman wrote in a statement. “The Obama administration views terrorist attacks as just another criminal justice problem where terrorists should be afforded all of the due process protections that bringing them onto U.S. soil will provide. These hardened terrorists, who have perverted Islam into a political ideology, are irregular enemy combatants who should be housed at Guantanamo, and not in Colorado or in any other state.”

His wife, Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, also commented.

“When and if there is a plan to move Guantanamo Bay detainees into Colorado and into the federal Supermax in Florence I and my office will be interested to discuss what those plans look like and how the feds hope to implement that plan,” Cynthia Coffman said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., strongly objected to the proposal.

“It is outrageous and unacceptable for President Obama to waste time and taxpayer dollars on a dangerous fantasy that will go nowhere,” he said in a statement. “The people of Colorado do not want the world’s worst terrorists housed in our own backyard and we will not stand for this. I will do everything in my power to resist these unlawful terrorist transfers from taking place.”

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., said he believes that the transfer of some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to Colorado is unacceptable, and will continue working with Gardner to do everything possible to prevent that from happening.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said she is looking for something more definitive from Obama to see “if this is a real option under consideration.”

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Ken Buck said, “like almost everyone in Colorado, we think the terrorists should be kept at Gitmo and not brought here.”

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

Mark K. Matthews is the Washington correspondent for The Denver Post. He’s covered Congress and the White House for a decade, first for the Orlando Sentinel and then for the Post. His past work includes two jailhouse murder confessions, investigations of the VA and NASA and a long, strange trip into the mudbogging world of Lake County, Fla.

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